History

Lieutenant Frank Bethune objected when he was told to hold the Spoil Bank (south of Ypres) on 13 March 1918. He said it was ‘useless death trap’ but he was overruled. So, his whole section volunteered to join him. He issued each man with the following order: 1/3 pic.twitter.com/p9FIOWlvgN

— Andy Rawson (@AndrewRawson11) May 19, 2026

 

An Insight

On May 18, 1939, Professor Tolkien gave his famous lecture “On Fairy Stories” at the University of St Andrews.

There he argued that fairy tales and myths are deeply human stories, not childish distractions. He believed fantasy allows people to experience wonder again, recover a… pic.twitter.com/9mG6TNjEzk

— Tolkien World (@TolkienWorldG) May 18, 2026

 

I see wonderful things

Azure blue swimming pool in the Hearst Castle.

Many call it the most beautiful pool in history. pic.twitter.com/CJp2UiRrkD

— James Lucas (@JamesLucasIT) May 19, 2026

 

Offbeat Humor

Which way do windows open in Europe pic.twitter.com/Unn5e5Pysx

— Terrible Maps (@TerribleMaps) May 19, 2026

 

Data Talks

Many young adults imagine they can play the relational field hard through their 20s, then settle down to marry and have kids around 30—à la @alexandracooper.

And sure, some pull it off. More-educated, affluent Americans manage it more often than not.

But what most don't…

— Brad Wilcox (@BradWilcoxIFS) May 18, 2026

 

Sunset over the Port, 1963 Maurice Brianchon

Sunset over the Port, 1963 Maurice Brianchon (France 1888-1979)

Click to enlarge.

If Edward Hopper painted in Lagunillas, Venezuela

Circa 1960, we lived in Camp Mene Grande, an expatriate oilfield camp near Lagunillas, Venezuella, on the shores of Lake Maracaibo.  

My father took this picture of our home.

I like the American Realism bleakness of it.  It reminds me of an Edward Hopper scene.  So I asked Gemini to render it as if painted by Edward Hopper.  Even bleaker but I like it.

Click to enlarge.

And the bleakness was real, though, comparatively, not in the camp.  From my mother's autobiography, describing this, her first trip overseas (starting from Tulsa to Houston to New Orleans to Miami to Jamaica to Colombia to Maracaibo, Venezuela.)  Arriving in Venezuela was only the first half of the journey.  They started south by car from Maracaibo.  From Love and Laughter in a Suitcase by Virginia L. Bayless

We stopped in Cabimas, which was 25 miles south of the ferry landing at Palmerejo. There we had lunch at the Mene Grande Mess Hall, and I met some of the office staff. Lagunillas lay 23 miles further on to the south, and as we drove on down the shore of the lake, the hard-topped road turned into a dusty, gravel road. The native settlements became fewer and smaller. They also became poorer and dirtier! The houses were now wretched mud shacks with thatched, or galvanized iron, corrugated, roofs. The road was lined with oil pipelines, tank farms and pumping oil wells. In the populated areas, I noticed 55-gallon steel oil drums alongside the road, in front of each shack. These settlements had no utilities and drinking water was delivered into the oil drums by tank trucks. The streets were unpaved and there were open sewage ditches along the sides of the road.

By the time we had reached Lagunillas, I was in a state of near-shock and panic, and I almost felt physically ill. This was the first time in my life that I had seen such abject poverty and filth. Lagunillas turned out to be the ugliest village of them all, and this was our new home for the next two years!

It was with considerable relief that we entered the Mene Grande Camp just beyond the village. It was surrounded by a very high fence with barbed wire on the top, and there was a guard on duty at the gate. Entry was controlled to safeguard against sabotage and theft, as all of the common facilities were located here. There were offices, workshops, a dispensary, loading dock, storage tanks, derricks, pumping oil- wells, and endless pipelines. At one end of the camp were the social club and living quarters for the staff. The latter were composed of two World War II Quonset Huts, five family houses, three bachelor houses and two apartment buildings, each with two flats up and two flats down. Except for the Quonset huts, all of these buildings were wooden and built up on stilts in the typical style of the tropics. This was to improve ventilation and to try to avoid insects and other creepy-crawlies coming in.

 

In our area of the camp there were palm, mimosa, acacia and banana trees, hibiscus shrubs and many colours of the prolific bougainvillea vine. The greenery and flowers somewhat softened the industrial views. Although not pretty by any definition, it was at least a refuge from all of the squalor that lay just outside the gates of the camp. It gave one a comfortable sense of ‘apartness’. I might just survive!

We were assigned to a flat in one of the two-storey apartment buildings, which had been built as ‘temporary’ bachelor housing in 1929. The buildings had reportedly been condemned some years before our arrival in 1956. Nevertheless, the company was continuing to use them until plans for a new camp were realized.

The camp lay right beside the lake, but was actually 12 feet below sea level. It was protected by a 20-foot high earthen seawall. We were happy to have an apartment upstairs, as we could see over the top of the seawall, and enjoy the views over the entire camp, as well as out over the lake. The activities at the dock were endlessly fascinating as workers and crewboats bustled back and forth. And the hundreds of oil derricks standing out in Lake Maracaibo were a rare sight to behold. As we had no air conditioning, being upstairs proved to have another advantage, as we had the benefit of the sea breezes that one did not get at ground level, back of the seawall.

The stairs to our flat came up into a large screened veranda which ran the full length of the flat. There was a living room, dining room, kitchen, one bedroom and bathroom, in a shotgun arrangement. The rooms were high-ceilinged and spacious, and each had a doorway onto the porch. It had been freshly decorated for us in soft pastels with the woodwork enamelled white, except for the baseboards – which for some inexplicable reason were all painted an industrial, bright Kelly green!

History

A German carpenter reportedly left a pencil in the rafters while building a house in the 1600s, and it is now considered the oldest known surviving pencil in existence. pic.twitter.com/Ufh2E9ZbFY

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 19, 2026

 

An Insight

Do. not. stop.

Thoreau pic.twitter.com/WE1LIjATLt

— Atlas Press (@realAtlasPress) May 18, 2026

 

I see wonderful things

An Art Deco terra cotta sculpture is located on the Expo Square Pavilion in Tulsa, Oklahoma. pic.twitter.com/xxowRyXnUB

— HerodotusWave (@HerodotusWave) May 19, 2026